Tuesday, January 29, 2013

The great unwashed love to watch Springsteen swapping spit with his doo-rag wearing Corporal Klinger-nosed little shower buddy Stevie. Brooose fans, almost all of them male, thrill to the homo-erotic way Brooose holds his guitar up in front of another guitar hero in his band in a "you show me yours, and I'll show you mine" pose. They roar as he snarls hungrily into his microphone, like he's going to start going down on it, while singing anthems about smelly highways in New Fucking Jersey. These dopey Snooki-slobs love Broose's tuuuunes because each ditty sounds so much alike that even cretins who can't memorize more than one song can sing along anyway. What was that great one about getting diarrhea from a Newark Applebees, or a Rahway Burger King? Oh, yeah, "Born to Run." So here's to Puke Springsteen! Is this Photoshop job that far from the truuuuth?

Some bogs and low-rents…uh, blogs and torrents… actually post every monotonous album by The Boss, (not to mention Kid Rock or Ted Nugent or Bon Jovi and other arena retards). Sick puppies lap it up like it was their own turds with some undigested crunchy bits to re-chew. They bark out happy squeaks of "Thanks, Dude," or actually, "Thanks, Doody," because they love this shit so much.

In this ill corner of the Net, let's say that one stupid novelty single can often be more memorable, and even more artistic, than an entire discography of some tedious Top Ten hit-maker. No wonder that one stupid novelty single might fetch $20 or $50 on eBay while nobody's buuuying Bruuuuse's old Columbia albums for a dollar. An entire discography of other arena rock retards or flavors-of-the-day (like Duran Duran) remains unsold for a fiver. Every thrift shop and boot sale has a crate of Phil Collins stuff nobody wants. But...how many times are you gonna come across The Funny Boners?

So here's The Funny Boners, doing "Pukin' My Heart Out Over You." Like quite a few other stupid novelties you could name ("Who Let the Dogs Out," "I'm Henry the Eighth I Am" or "Someone Like You" by Adele) it's catchy. Like a cold. And you might have trouble getting it out of your head for a while. As opposed to that discography of Status Quo, which you can't get out of your basement because the garbageman won't touch it.

Yeah, it's the flip-side over here. There are "Dedicated Followers of Fashion," and curmudgeons sneering, "I'm Not Like Everybody Else." Neither side is exactly right, but a single isn't wasting as much of your time.

And so we pluck a stupid obscure black 45 rpm disc from the dark shelf, let it glint on the turntable for a few minutes, send it hurtling to a cloud (with more than a "this did not chart" sentence for it and a photo of the label) and appreciate that somebody took some time to try something that just might keep people from being sullen for a while. Which is about all that can be said for the one-shot dickheads called The Funny Boners. After all, all they are doing here is a kind of low-class version of a Phil Harris drawl-narration. If they wrote something really awful, 50,000 people might've been holding up Zippo lighters in front of them, like they do for a millionaire posturing in a workshirt and jeans costume and singing about how times are tough (to people who pay $1500 to a scalper for front row seats to hear him). Sample boners about life with a trailer trash bitch:

"I bought you a vacuum cleaner so it makes me all the meaner when I see the pile of dirt upon the floor.
And inside the bedroom closet is a sixteen ton deposit of that dirty smelly underwear you wore.
So I'm pukin' my heart out over you…"

Can you believe it, it was over a year ago, February 19, 2011 that the previous "Ill-ustrated song" turned up ("From the Indies to the Andies in his Undies" featuring Mr. Bean). Hopefully there will be more nauseating illustrated songs coming up in the future…

Listen on line or download it. Download it without wait time, garish photos promoting bogus dating services, idiot anime to bring you to a spyware site, and no Paypal banner asking for donations, nor any button to swindle you into getting a 'premium account' so some fat-cat cynical businessman can stay rich while artists and real music lovers stay poor.

Pity today's little monsters. Childhood is all too short for these ga-gas. Practically after their first babble of "goo goo," they are experimented on with subliminal Mozart CDs in the nursery, scientifically treated with chemical baby formulas, and regimented to pre-school. Stuffed toys are soon replaced by technology and they are grasping at cell phones to play with, and touching buttons on the iPad. By the time they are six, they are like the joyless "Children of the Damned," of the George Sanders movie. Sci-fi has become real. They are soberly solving a Rubik's cube in a few minutes, jaded by everything, showing their adult sense of entitlement by demanding every possible game for their video consoles, and already adept at killing thousands of people in a few minutes of happy anime-cum-violence on the screen.

The attention span for crayons, Silly Putty or a yo-yo...gone. These kids are done with "Sesame Street" songs by the time they're in their Underoos, and by then they're whining because they can't dress like Lady Gaga.

And a record player? You and I might remember owning one, and having only a small amount of precious 45's to play over and over. Today's kid wants an iPod with ten thousand songs on it, and has the ADD syndrome that goes with it.

At one time, a kid could have a great afternoon just sitting quietly listening to records. What a miraculous thing. Open this magical box, turn a switch, wait for it to warm up, put the tone arm down on a flat disc…and listen! LISTEN. Listen to a song like...

"I Want Me Seed," or some other bit of silliness.

At one time, the road to any child's musical education, began with the "novelty" single. For 40's kids, it was 78's and hearing jolly tunes from Uncle Don or Smilin' Ed. Kids in the 50's may have started collecting with either 78's or 45's (the kiddie novelty tune Groucho offered, "Funniest Song in the World," came in both formats from Young Peoples Records). By the late 50's and early 60's, the line between kiddie tune and "novelty" was blurred by everything from "Charlie Brown" by The Coasters to "Purple People Eater" and "Monster Mash."
And silly kid-oriented comedians from Soupy Sales ("The Mouse") to England's Freddie Davies came up with tunes that were light of heart. And head. How many kiddie TV hosts and singers are there now? How quickly do kids follow Lady Gaga instead?

"I Want Me Seed" could not be any more stupid if it was actually written by a bird. Still, thousands and thousands bought it, played it over and over, and if you had it and lost it, now it's back for you. In the song, Poor Freddie, shades of "One Froggy Evening" (the cult Warner Bros. cartoon about a ragtime-singing frog) has a wonderful bird who can sing beautifully. But the bird only sings for him. Any time somebody else is around, all it does is cry, "I Want Some Seed!" And "I want ME seed." (What a versatile avian, knowing both expressions).

Sadly (and some of us can easily find the tragedy in comedy), "I want me seed" is really utmost for a captive bird deprived of being with its own kind. Without sex or socialization with its feathered friends, it's only great pleasure is eating. (Right, YOU think your pet's love for YOU is #1...you also think the bird actually knows what it's saying when it repeats a phrase you drilled into its pea-sized brain). At least, in the picture, Freddie allows his bird out of the cage. I did that when I had a parakeet for a childhood pet. It's cage door was open most of the day (windows closed) and closed and cloaked only at night when it most naturally wanted to feel safe in sleep.

Childhood is a magical time, and brief. Kids should be allowed their innocence as long as possible, but it doesn't seem possible in this craven age. Don't you remember with great fondness so much of your kindly childhood influences? Kiddie stars I've known kept receiving fan mail even when they (and their fans) were very old. I'd walk down the street with someone who hadn't had a kiddie show (or any show) in 30 years, and up ahead, some pedestrian's grim face would break into a smile and as our paths met, there'd come a cheerful, "Hi, I grew up with you!" or just a call of the name, and a friendly wave. And hearing an old novelty song even Soupy's "Mouse" or Freddie's bird tune, can brighten a day by recalling a gentler time. Mr. Davies surely knows this, in getting e-mail on his website or when a fan-tourist drops by the store he now runs. He's semi-retired after a long and surprisingly impressive career on stage and screen beyond kiddie shows and novelty songs such as "I Want Me Seed." Who knows why the caged bird sings. I do know why it might cry "I Want Me Seed." Which is because it knows how futile it is to ask for its freedom.

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One of my earliest concert memories (and I could barely see above the adults in front of me) is watching Michael Flanders and Donald Swann perform their satires and silliness. It was an unlikely sight; a portly, bearded gent in a wheelchair and a bespectacled eccentric spidering over his keyboard with amateurish enthusiasm. But Flanders was expressive even behind the whiskers, and lively despite suffering the limit of his confinement. Swann not only chuckled over every line he'd heard from his partner hundreds of times, but had a kind of Stan Laurel sense of hysteria about him that was infectious. How did these eccentric songwriters on a bare stage manage to become smash hits on the West End and Broadway?

Their "Drop of a Hat" and "Another Hat" revues (the first arriving in 1956; they amicably parted ways in 1967) probably would not have happened if not for earlier cover versions of their songs, especially from Ian Wallace. The duo, who had mixed credits in solo work, had been invited to write for such shows as "Penny Plain" (1951) and "Airs on a Shoestring" (1953). Audiences were amused by their songs as performed by cabaret favorites of the day including Max Adrian, Joyce Grenfell, and especially the influential baritone Ian Wallace, who in his years before turning up in these light comic farragos, was an opera singer, and a quiz master on radio (27 years for his "My Music" show). The first important vinyl promoting the names Flanders & Swann came from Wallace, via his ep of four animal songs, titled "Wallace's Private Zoo." You get them all below. And yes, it's Donald Swann at the piano. From there, the duo timidly used their fame to stage an informal evening where they could sing all their own numbers their way. They were practically an overnight success after that!

If the name Ian Wallace seems familiar to you (and it's not because you've heard of the new wave drummer by that name) then you may have been around here in October of 2009 when I posted about him with a version of the F&S classic "Transport of Delight" which appeared on another of Ian's ep (four songs on a 45rpm) releases.

The Ian Wallace style is quite dated now, and would be even if he was performing Gilbert & Sullivan, much less Flanders & Swann. He over-acts at times, and sings with all too great an appreciation for his own rounded tones. It takes a comedian, not a singer, to get a laugh with the gentle lyrics and amusing images involving a lovesick warthog, forgetful elephant, "bodger" faced rhinoceros or mud-loving hippo. Probably his funniest cover version is "The Warthog," as he imitates both the female and male of the species and can't help but get caught up in the combo of pathos-and-piffle that often characterizes Flanders and Swann's best work. For more on Ian Wallace O.B.E. (July 10, 1919 – October 12, 2009) you can go to the man himself, and read his books with the Hippo allusions in the titles: "Promise Me You'll Sing Mud" and "Nothing Quite Like It."

For Flanders and Swann, well, all their work is in print. Many albums are faithfully rendered on individual CD, and there are single-disc compilations. You can get a lovely "The Complete Flanders & Swann" box set, with excellent annotation. Did I say "Complete?" No, it was joined by a second box set ("Hat Trick") which rescues the original Drop of a Hat album (the men recorded the songs twice…a UK performance and later the US Broadway version) and fills up the other 2 CDs with rarities. This includes radio archives, mild and no longer relevant revue and topical material, and "bootlegs" (mostly of numbers edited out of the official West End "Hat" and "Another Hat" shows) made by family members…things the true "completist" would want to study (more than laugh at). Still, I don't regret buying it, and neither would you if you're the type that wallows in glorious Flanders & Swann

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Saturday, January 19, 2013

Sapristi! For a few weeks, there's actual winter. Yes, despite climate change, there's bound to be a week or two where the temperature actually hits the freezing level. So quick, before it's over, listen to "Winter Rushes On," because the weather's going to slip slide away into balmy temperatures very soon.

"Winter Rushes On" was the B-side for "Without You," a single released in August of 1964 on British Decca. It was imported for America's "Big Top" label, where there was some hope that The Daly's might be competition for other moody duos of the day. The hazy shades of "Winter Rushes On"'s words and lyrics could've been on Paul and Artie's "Sound of Silence" album. The song could've been covered as part of the filler on any Peter and Gordon and Chad and Jeremy disc.

The song is pleasantly sad, and well suited for a solo trudge on newly fallen snow. But be quick, as snow doesn't stick around long these days, and soon turns into the kind of dirty slush only suited for the eyelids of Adele or Nicki Minaj.

"Winter Rushes On" was written by only one Daly; John Patrick Daly along with Patrick Carroll. As you expect total obscurity from this blog, duly noted is: "Adieu Ma Maison," released around the same time, with the same melody but French lyrics by Alice Dona. She was a "Ye-Ye Girl," and her major recordings were between 1963 and 1965. Her version was apparently also covered on an old EP by the French fivesome called "Les Celibataires."

I haven't tracked down "Adieu Ma Maison," because every time I've been in a Paris record store and asked, the reply has been, "Adieu, Ma Twit." And the door gets slammed in my face. Which leads me to growl "Sapristi!" and skulk away with my baguette between my legs. However, when I invite Madame Dona to journey from the Ile De France to the Ile de Folks, I'll ask her to bring along a copy to give away (in the spirit of the "Free French" of Casablanca). Her birthday is coming up on February 17th. A month later, and there will be heat waves! Winter gone! "We were married in the spring...there was plenty to drink..."

One of the biggest (s)hits in recent memory is Adele's "Someone Like You." The U.K.'s most exported pork product ended up over-exposed on awards shows and a health hazard for anyone trying to navigate a store without hearing her loud, vengeful car-alarm bleating. The more you hear it, the less it becomes a tolerable Whitney Houston trumpet and more the bark of a novelty like "Who Let the Dogs Out." Even in Spanx and minus a coating of tart make-up, watching her perform is only slightly less revolting than seeing that "Gangnam Style" Korean galloping in place like a retarded pony.

"Someone Like You" isn't even such a good "paranoid bitch confronting an ex-boyfriend" song.

"You're married now," she says, "Guess she gave you things I didn't give to you. Old friend, why are you so shy? Ain't like you to hold back or hide from the light."

Hold back? If a grotesquely lumpy ex-girlfriend suddenly appeared, who wouldn't shrink away? Does a pedestrian jump in front of an oncoming bus?

"I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited, but...I couldn't fight it."

At this point, I imagine the ex-boyfriend acting like Graham Chapman as King Arthur, and crying "Run away! RUN AWAY!" But galloping after him, is the fat horse of the apocalypse, her naggy siren voice shrieking with migraine-inducing anger: "Never mind, I'll find someone like you!" Then leave him the fuck alone Adele, and start dating at the Institute for the Blind.

"I wish nothing but the best for you..." she screams with all the sincerity of Kathy Bates opposite James Caan in "Misery."

Don't forget me…"

You think this guy could forget a nightmare of sex with Adele? The time she got on top and he had to call the paramedics to re-start his breathing? The time he went down on her and heard an echo? The way her sweat smelled like gravy?

By contrast, let's examine "In the Winter" by Janis Ian, a much more artistic and enduring "paranoid stalker" song from an earlier generation. Ian is also an enduring artist, who has remained viable for 40 years, putting out albums, coming up with a compelling autobiography, and continuing to tour. By contrast Adele, like Susan Boyle, will have the shelf life of a can of Spam.

The opposite of fat, gentile, British Adele, the former Janis Fink is short, Jewish and American. Instead of being a braying one-note, she uses a variety of vocal textures against an impressive variation of backing music; stark bony piano, groaning cellos, a dash of Psycho-violin, and when the suspense becomes unbearable, the full grandiose orchestra.

Big-voiced singers rely on loudness these days to score emotion. Janis, like most of her folkie influences, prefers to blend acting and attitude in with the singing. It works; all she has to do is mutter: "I met your friend. She's very nice. What can I say." Uh-oh.

Unlike Adele, who stormed in on her ex-lover, Janis has quietly emerged from the shadows:

"You have a lovely home." Double uh-oh.

Does she have a new lover? "No, I live alone."

Dementia drips from every plucked violin note, and no horror film actress ever delivered lines like that with more disquieting menace. No horror scriptwriter could invent a more disturbing or disjointed pair of sentences than these:
"You're looking well. I'm not afraid."

BE afraid. Be very afraid. Will she kill the guy? Kill the new girlfriend? Kill herself? Her voice rises: "Lovely wife. You have a lovely wife!" Lovely. LOVELY! The killer's words in Hitchcock's "Frenzy" may have still lingered in Ian's mind.

The song's eerie navigation continues between major and minor, and between straitjacket calm (she seems soothed by imagining "extra blankets") and cold fury. It moves along contrasting Paul Simon-type alienation and vengeance (you fear she'll do some damage one fine day) until it climaxes with the uncorked bathos of "Macarthur Park" and its flurry of orchestral martyrs killing themselves to help Janis reach for those impossible notes.

Unlike Adele's number, you can listen to this complex little drama again and again, finding new musical accents and lyrical quirks. Did any of this happen or is it in her imagination? Since her ex-lover doesn't speak, is she speaking to a corpse? You can imagine many different scenarios. Maybe the guy's still alive but about to die. Maybe she'll kill them both and the last lines are her acceptance of a future in solitary confinement! You have till the Spring to figure this all out….

No download for the Adele song…just go into your local supermarket, stand under the speakers near the pork section, and you're bound to hear it within 10 minutes.

In the winter…Dusty Springfield sometimes didn't have a man to help shovel the sidewalk. Which was her choice. Barbi Benton had Hefner to keep her warm. But since he was always a bit spindly, that un-PC fur coat helped, too.

Both ladies covered Janis Ian's "In the Winter" while still in their prime. Both versions are below.

As you'd expect, the expressive Ms. Springfield almost does justice to the original, and the production values are fairly well copied. Give her an extra point for her British-Southern accent, which unintentionally makes "for a dime I can talk to God" into "for a damn." The sultry, smoke-dream singer always tended to put a romantic and soft edge on the heartache songs. Or, to put it in the country terms C&W singer Barbi Benton would understand, she was achy, but not breaky.

Benton, discovered by Hefner, was promoted via several covers and nude layouts for Playboy in the 70's (nice of Hef to share). She won fame but was not taken seriously when she was promoted as a singer. Nashville not too pleased with any titular competition for Dolly Parton, and probably wondering how C&W authentic a New York born Jew could be. With the hype and a decent song ("Brass Buckles") Barbi actually had a Top Ten C&W chart hit in 1975, and her first two albums went Top 20 in 1975.

Shifting to pop mainstream for her 1976 "Something New" album, she offered a decent if pointless cover of "He's a Rebel" (complete with backing chicks) and in a more ambitious choice, took the spotlight for "In the Winter."

It's a very credible solo performance, but taking into account that Barbi remained friends with Hef after their half-dozen years together, she doesn't have the heart of a stalker needed to make this song memorable. Her 1978 album "Ain't That Just the Way" went nowhere and after one more try with "Kinetic Voyage" in 1988, she pretty much retired from both singing and acting to raise her kids.

The winter of their careers? Dusty's last years have been well documented, and her sparse output in her last decade was mainly involved in gay-friendly duets with the Pet Shop Boys and re-mixes for the disco crowd that had become ardent fans ever since the whispers of her true sexuality became known. Barbi has occasionally surfaced for a photo-op at a celebrity event, but is apparently fine with her domestic life and the warm fuzzy letters she still gets from nostalgic fans.

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

The year started off on a downer, with the January 1st death of the most versatile female vocalist of the 20th Century, the under-appreciated Patti Page. But 2013's first set of posts begins with a salute to the living legend, female folkie Joan Baez, born on January 9th, 1941.

Joan has been a consistent presence on the music scene since the 60s, and aside from her love songs, protest songs, and her heartfelt concerts for so many good causes, her name will always be linked with a legend of folk music and protest…a certain scruffy gent who rose from strumming in clubs in Greenwich Village to writing songs covered by artists all over the world. Joan was eager to sing a song from the guy who turned heads during those early folk-rock days and who influenced so many people with his sharp wit, fascinating personality and both his beautiful ballads and his scorching songs of protest. Joan's name is forever linked with the one and only: Phil Ochs.

Oh yeah, Joan also put out an entire album of songs by some guy named Bob, who she was sweet on. And one of her best self-penned numbers, "Diamonds and Rust" was about him. But one of Joan's most famous singles, which you get in the download below, is Phil's "There But for Fortune." What do you get as a birthday gift for a woman who has everything the material world could give her, and more importantly, the respect and love of fans, friends and peers? She'd probably be the one to suggest that the gift of a song to others would be appropriate. Well, as long as it's ONE song, and not an entire discography on Pirate Bay.

"There But for Fortune" go all of us. Including Bob. I once mentioned to the brilliant Ms. Baez, her superiority to Bob. How? While she did a marvelous job in imitating Dylan's voice (in the midst of her cover of "Simple Twist of Fate") and even his look (if you remember the "Rolling Thunder" tour), HE, as great as he is, could never imitate Joan's voice or look like her!

During a live performance of "There But for Fortune," the crowd roared at the first notes. And she said, "You old Folkniks, you! It's MUTUAL!" We love you, Joan. Happy Birthday to the greatest and most enduring of the female folkies, still touring the world. Last year's concerts included Germany, France, Morocco, Italy, Austria, Ecuador, and…Sapristi…an entire month in the UK that included dates in Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Bristol, Salisbury, Basingstoke, Ipswich, Birmingham, London, Oxford, Nottingham, Cardiff, Plymouth, Poole, Cambridge, York, Gateshead, Glasgow and Brighton.

Singer-songwriter Victor Jara's work has lived on, both his activism, and his music. Jara (pronounced "Harra") recorded in Spanish, but whether you know the language or not, his work is still moving…with heartfelt vocals and good melodies. His mix of ballads and protest songs reminded people of another artist…Phil Ochs.

"Victor Jara was a friend of mine," Ochs recalled at the end of a rambling taped conversation with Harry Smith at the Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan. "He was 27 years old…the Pete Seeger of Chile...When I was in Chile he came up to me and said, 'Hey, you, you're the North American protest singer, right? Phil Ochs.' I said, 'Yeah, you're a Communist and I'm a Socialist.' He said, 'Why don't you come with me and sing to the workers up in the copper mines?" Phil sang about the mines in Kentucky, so he surely was ready to sing along. Phil managed to get out of South America alive (the adventures are told in Michael Schumacher's bio of him). For Victor Jara, protest songs cost him his life. After General Pinochet's coup Jara was captured and brought to a stadium in Santiago that had become a death camp. Phil Ochs:

"So he goes to sing in front of 30,000 people, mostly soldiers and prisoners. Victor now knows he's going to die. So he prepares himself to die…trapped in the Santiago Stadium…they grabbed his fingers and broke them….Victor fell to the floor…they picked him up and said, "Sing, Victor, sing.' With the blood pouring out of his hands, Victor chose to stand up, wobbly, and sang. The other prisoners cheered. At this point they sprayed the stands with machine-gun fire to kill off a few...they took out a .45 and killed him. They threw his body with the other corpses. Just another dead body. His wife found him a week later. When that happened, I said, 'All right, that's the end of Phil Ochs.'"

The rebel in Phil did not die right away…he struggled to write new topical songs and appear at anti-war events. He also organized the "Evening with Salvador Allende" show at Madison Square Garden and persuaded Bob Dylan to turn up. A song that evening was for Victor Jara and sung by Arlo Guthrie, who quickly composed a melody to lyrics by Adrian Mitchell. He did a good job with his just-learned song, and you hear it below, live at the event. The full lyrics are here:
http://www.arlo.net/resources/lyrics/victor-jara.shtml

"Then the generals seized Chile. They arrested Victor then

They caged him in a stadium with five-thousand frightened men

Victor stood in the stadium. His voice was brave and strong

And he sang for his fellow prisoners till the guards cut short his song

They broke the bones in both his hands. They beat him on the head

They tore him with electric shocks and then they shot him dead

His hands were gentle, his hands were strong…."

Jara died on September 16th, 1973. The dictatorship of Pinochet lasted through 1990…with estimates of at least 3,000 innocent citizens killed, and 30,000 imprisoned and tortured. Pinochet's power helped him remain free until he was finally arrested in England in 1998, and dragged back to Chile in 2000. He still avoided a trial for another four years, and was not close to conviction when in 2006, at the ripe old age of 91, he died of natural causes. Thousands of still-loyal supporters saw to it that the General had a dignified funeral and that any protestors were shoved away and threatened with violence.

Seven more years…and finally a total of eight men under Pinochet's command have been indicted in the cruel death of Victor Jara. Two men, one of them tracked down to America, have been specifically charged with homicide; the rest with aiding and abetting the murder. Hopefully the "we were just following orders" defense, which disgusted spectators at Nuremberg and similar trials, will not be considered an excuse for brutality and sadism involving civilians and fellow countrymen. Victor's widow Joan said, "We're pushing forward in demanding justice for Victor with the hope that justice will follow for everyone."

Back in the winter of 1958, Chancellor (best known for Fabian and Frankie Avalon singles) released a raucous bit of nastiness called "She's a Fat Girl," which Billboard, in an un-PC age, called "a novelty rocker with funny lyrics." The lyrics: "She's ugly, she's cross-eyed, got big ears, she got buck teeth…but you love her!"

This one-shot obscurity turns up on this obscure blog...as an excuse for a rant! Here's ranting about fat girl Gerard Depardieu! He was always ugly, but instead of buck teeth, he made millions of bucks because he did have talent. He appeared in some oddball and cult films ill folks might enjoy. He was a comical heavy to Harpo-idiot Pierre Richard in "La Chevre" and a bisexual tranny-bully to mousy Michel Blanc in the dark satire "Menage." You see him in his make-up in the image above, as well as in his current corpulent state.

Gerry's made headlines for pissing in public aboard an airplane (it could've been worse; it could've been Depar-doody) and for a recent drunk-driving incident on land (which could've gotten someone killed). While the latter case is still in the courts, the millionaire boor added to his notoriety via taking a Russian passport to protest paying high tax in France!

This is even more outrageous than his outrageous French accent! Russia?

Embracing Vlad Putin? ARE YOU CRAZY?

Listen, Fat Girl, if you were born and raised in Russia, chances are you'd already be dead. You would've been put in the Army and sent off to murder as many people in neighboring countries as you could, before being killed yourself. Maybe, Mr. Actor, you would've been trained by the KGB, sent off in drag to seduce and poison some British spy, and then knocked off to make sure you never talked. If you did manage to make movies in Russia, they'd be so crappy they'd only be shown in gulags where people were forced to watch as a form of torture. How many great Russian films have there been since the silent era?

Fat Girl, we're talking about Russia where girls who formed a rock group got sent to prison! Where creative people have no rights…certainly no copyrights. Where free speech is met by cruelty. Where starving homeless infants are denied adoption by Americans. The lean, hungry, pointy-nosed, plastic-surgery-faced Putin Devil keeps himself in office year after year to engage in activities that would make Rasputin puke. But…oh right, Fat Girl, YOU played Rasputin in a movie and Putin loved it. And he loved posing with you.

Gerry, I know you are a longtime reader of this blog, as so many rich, famous and important people are. But I have to say your Putin-Passport antics make you a DISGRACE. The Ruskies are happy anytime there's a disaster in the Free World (they never send aid). The Ruskies only support countries that are evil and dangerous to the free people of the world. The Ruskies steal all the movies, music and books from the countries that actually have creative and worthwhile product to sell. The Ruskies are so disgusting that anyone with brains and morality tries to escape, from Mikhail Baryshnikov to Milos Forman to Nadia Comaneci.

Fat girl, I am doing what I can. I have taken sanctions against you! For what you've done, this blog will NEVER, not EVER post that Levitt & McClure album you asked for. Nor any "not to be missed" really bad Psych albums that were reduced to mp3s the size of microfilm, farted out of Zinhof's ass and smuggled to Sweden. And most definitely NOT even a SINGLE, like "Sugar Lady" from the group Song, which your beloved Curt Boettcher was involved with! No! Instead of sunshine music or kewl psych, you suffer with the raunchy old Rock-a-Bouts, and their sax-spewing rockabilly song about an ugly fat girl! Adieu, Depardieu! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.